Chain management — locations, settings and access

Several cafés, shops or salons can share one cenaly.ge account. The catalogue is shared, while storefront selection, prices and operating settings belong to each location.

Requirements#

• Sign in as the account owner to create a location and grant access.
• Prepare its address, contacts, country, currency and opening hours.
• Check the available location allowance in your subscription. The limit prevents adding locations; it does not switch off existing ones.
• Prepare a workstation and equipment for the till: POS devices.

Levels of chain settings#

Catalogue. With one location, a new item is added there automatically. With several locations, choose where it is sold. Later changes to the shared item update locations that already carry it; local prices remain. Editing the base price does not replace every price across the chain.

New location. The form suggests the account’s country and currency. The language set is taken from the account at creation, while the source language comes from brand defaults: check it in the location card. The time zone is suggested from the country. The menu starts empty. Hours, taxes, tips, charges and connections from the first location do not become settings of the new one by themselves — copy them with “Copy settings to other locations” (below).

POS appearance. Screen settings have their own order: business-type defaults → saved location appearance → this device’s preferences. In an older account, a location without its own POS settings may use the former shared version until the first local edit. This does not copy the whole location card.

Staff policies. Clocking has explicit location and role overrides — see Time clock. This does not distribute all chain settings.

Set defaults for new locations#

1. In Locations, open the gear in the list header. The gear on a location card applies only to that location.
2. In General, check the account language, currency and country. Country and currency prefill the new-location form; you can change them during creation. Check the new location’s source language separately.
3. In Languages, set the account’s language pool. Each location card can use all languages or a restricted set.
4. Use Interface to make the admin panel comfortable to work with. These preferences do not set chain-wide sales policies.

Result: new locations are easier to fill in. Changing defaults does not replace the country, currency or schedule of existing locations.

Open a new location#

Task: add a shop in Kazan alongside your Moscow shop, keeping a shared catalogue.

1. Open Locations and the add form. Enter the internal and public names, address, phone, email, country and currency. Create the location.
2. Open its settings. In General, check business type, country, currency, languages, taxes, tips and service charge.
3. In Contacts, check the address and contact channels; in Hours, set the schedule, time zone and exceptions. The time zone is suggested from the country, but you can select it manually: check each location if the chain spans time zones.
4. In Menu, select categories and items from the shared catalogue, set prices and check the stop list. This tab configures location menus and appears when there are several locations.
5. In Payments, configure available methods and connections. Check the required channels in Marketing and the storefront and appearance in WEB menu. Visible tabs depend on business type and interface settings.
6. Assign employees to the location, configure POS devices, and open the storefront to check the assortment, prices and hours.

If the storefront is empty, check item selection specifically for the new location. If creation is blocked, check the subscription allowance.

Copy settings from another location#

Task: a fifth location opens, and its tax, payment methods, tips, charges, hours and till rules should come from a reference location instead of being entered again.

1. In Locations, on the reference location’s card, click the Copy settings to other locations… icon (two sheets). A window opens over the list; you can change the reference location in it.
2. Under Apply to, tick the target locations — one, several or All locations. A location in another country or with another currency is marked.
3. Under What to copy, tick the groups: Tax, Payment methods, Tips, Service charge and fees, Opening hours, Checkout fields, Cashier control, Cash rules, POS mode and order types, Menu languages.
4. Check What will change: for each location, a list of settings “was → will be”. Settings that already match are not written.
5. Click the button with the number of targets — for example, Copy to 2 locations.

Good to know:

• Tax is copied only between locations in the same country, while Service charge and fees and Cash rules (they contain money amounts) are copied only with the same currency. If a selected location has another country or currency, that group is not offered, and the window says which location blocks it.
• Never copied: seller details and the receipt’s legal entity, fiscal data and cash registers, payment provider connections and their keys, country, currency, time zone, address, contacts. Connect the payment provider at the target location separately — see Payments.
• Opening hours are the whole weekly schedule. Each location keeps its own time zone and date exceptions. If the reference location has no hours filled in, the target’s hours stay as they are.
• The acknowledgement of foreign-cash rules in Cash rules is per location and is not copied.
• The catalogue is shared by the account; items and their location prices are not copied by this window — use Change prices for prices.

Regional prices#

Task: sell the same item for ₽350 in Moscow and ₽320 in Kazan.

1. Open the Moscow location settings → Menu, find the item and set ₽350.
2. Open the same item in the Kazan location menu and set ₽320.
3. Save and check both storefronts. Location prices and menu inclusion are also available in the shared item editor.

Result: the name and description are shared, but prices differ. For a temporary shortage in Moscow, use the local stop list: it does not remove the item in Kazan. An explicit all-locations stop action also exists — check the selected scope.

If only one price changed, that is expected: multiple locations keep separate prices. For a regional promotion, repeat the change for each relevant location — there is no shared “Volga region” group with an inherited price yet.

Update several catalogue items#

To edit base prices in sequence, open the catalogue’s table view for prices and features. On the Catalogue table page, find the items and edit cells in the Price column, checking the save status.

Change prices of many items by a rule#

Task: raise all drink prices by 7% at two locations and round to 10.

1. In the catalogue table, choose the Drinks category (or find items with search) — the rule applies to the items currently shown.
2. Click Change prices. On the Rule tab choose By percent and enter 7 (a minus lowers prices). You can also choose By amount or Set price.
3. In Round choose “to 10”, and in Direction choose Nearest, Up or Down.
4. In Where to change, clear Base price and tick the two locations.
5. Check the Preview: item, location, Now → Will be, the average change and what was skipped (no price, not sold at the location, price stays the same).
6. Click Apply. Prices reach the catalogue, location menus and storefronts the same way as an edit in the item card.

Result: drinks have new prices at the two locations; the base price and other locations are unchanged. An item not sold at a location is not added there. If an item used the base price at a location, it gets its own location price; if you also change the base price, that location simply follows the new base price.

To roll back, open the Log tab of the same window → Roll back: only prices nobody has changed since are restored. The log keeps the last 20 operations on this device; each item also shows the change in its card’s change history, where you can restore a single item.

For a similar product, open the original card and use the duplicate action: for example, Duplicate product or Duplicate dish — the label depends on the business type. A new card opens; check its name, prices and sales locations. Photos are not copied: add them separately.

The camera icon in the image upload area lets you take a photo on a supported phone. If the camera does not open, select an existing file from the device.

Prepare location devices#

If one till looks different, check its local overrides. Reset this device removes them while keeping the location appearance.

Training mode is currently beta and available only in web POS. A manager enables 🎓 Training mode on a specific device for the selected location; other tills continue working normally. Training sales do not enter reports or print receipts. Before a real sale, end the mode using Exit on the training banner. Native POS apps do not support this mode yet.

Export and transfer data#

• To download your data, use Data export.
• To load a catalogue from a file, see Catalogue import.
• For employees, see Spreadsheet import: CSV or XLSX; on cenaly.ru, columns from 1C:ZUP exports are recognised. This imports employee cards, not the full payroll history.

After transfer, check each location’s prices and assortment, then assign employees their roles and location access.

Give a manager access to their location#

Choose the mechanism according to how the person works with you.

Share offers View, Prices, Menu, Orders, Administrator and Owner. For example, Prices allows price editing; it is a separate co-ownership permission, not an employee role level.

For Anna, a manager who works only in Kazan:

1. In Staff → Roles & access, configure the required sections and View, Edit and Setup levels.
2. Select Kazan under the role’s Locations.
3. Also select Kazan in the employee card’s Manager and locations block. Enable admin sign-in and issue a till PIN if needed.
4. Ask Anna to sign in again and check her working sections.

Result: permitted locations are the intersection of role locations × employee-card locations. If the role includes Moscow and Kazan but the card includes only Kazan, Kazan is the result.

If a location disappears, check both lists. Old cards without personal coverage may retain access to all locations — fill them in. See Roles and permissions for detailed access boundaries and till restrictions.

For an employee covering two shops, include both in the role and the card. Assigning a direct manager does not itself remove broader role permissions.

See the whole chain#

Task: compare Moscow and Kazan over the same period.

1. Open Finance as the owner or with access to the relevant locations.
2. Select all locations and one reporting period.
3. In Overview, compare the location breakdown: revenue, orders, average ticket, purchases and gross profit, including changes from the previous period.
4. Select one location for details. Find item statistics in Menu → Statistics and staff plan versus actual results in Finance → Staff.

Result: the comparison uses one period and the selected coverage. If a location is missing, check permissions and filters first. Consider each location’s currency when comparing amounts. The comparison block appears with activity at two locations and all locations selected; the 12-month period has no comparison with the previous year.

Chain orders: pause and hours for several locations at once#

Task: on a holiday three kitchens of the chain are overloaded — you need to stop online orders at all three for 30 minutes and see which locations are working right now.

1. Open Locations and click “🛎️ Orders by location” in the list header. The button is shown to the owner when the account has its own locations.
2. Review the summary. Above the table you see how many locations are taking orders, how many are paused and how many are open by their hours right now. In a location’s row:
   • “Now by hours” — “Open until 22:00”, “Closed, opens tomorrow at 10:00” or “Hours not set”. Time is computed in the location’s own time zone.
   • “Order intake” — “Taking orders”, “Paused until 14:30” or “Busy +15′ until 14:45”. If only some channels are paused, they are listed below. The reason entered by staff is shown here too.
   • “Alcohol online” — for locations in Russia it is “Prohibited by law”: the storefront hides “add to cart” for alcohol automatically, and it cannot be switched on. In other countries this is a switch: “Sold online” or “Off online” (see below).
3. Tick the locations you need; the checkbox in the table header selects all locations.
4. Optionally enter a reason (“Kitchen overloaded”), then click “Pause 30 min”, “Pause 60 min” or “Until end of day”. To keep taking orders with a longer prep time, choose an extra from +10′ to +60′ (for example, +15′) and click “Busy +15 min”.
5. To reopen earlier, tick the locations and click “Resume”.

Result: each ticked location gets the same pause as the “⏸ Pause” button on its POS or kitchen screen, and their headers show it at once. “Until end of day” means 23:59 local time of each location. If some locations could not be paused, you see a message and those locations stay ticked: click the action again.

Switch alcohol off online for a location (locations outside Russia). Task: a location’s licence does not allow selling alcohol for takeaway, but the bar wants to keep wine and beer on the menu.

1. Mark the alcohol items: Inventory → product (or dish) card → “Alcoholic product” checkbox. The mark applies to all locations.
2. In the “🛎️ Orders by location” window, set the “Alcohol online” switch of that location to “Off online”.

Result: in about a minute the location’s storefront menu updates. Marked items stay visible, but instead of “add to cart” guests see “Ask a waiter” — on the website, QR menu, kiosk, messengers and through the AI agent. An order with such an item sent around the storefront (for example, from an old cart) is rejected with an explanation. Cashiers and waiters sell as usual. To sell online again, switch back to “Sold online”. Other locations of the chain are not affected.

Copy opening hours. In the same window click “Copy hours…”, choose the source location and tick the locations that should get its weekly schedule. Each location keeps its own time zone and date exceptions (holidays, short days).

Franchises, domains and branding#

The chain owner manages the catalogue; franchisees receive co-ownership of their locations. This divides the work but does not replace royalty calculations or franchise standards enforcement.

The storefront supports a logo, colours, font, cover, favicon, welcome text and QR styling. Connect a custom domain through site settings; copy the DNS records from the panel. HTTPS is issued automatically. There is no promise that a domain will work within 15 minutes: DNS also affects timing.

A custom website is a subscription add-on. For detailed steps, including a domain without a subdomain, see Custom domain.

Working with a poor connection#

The guest storefront uses its last-loaded cache; it is not an installable PWA. POS has its own app mode and offline mechanisms. Location edits may wait for connectivity, so check the storefront after saving. See Working offline and Mobile apps.

Limitations#

• There are no location groups or regions with shared settings and cascading overrides.
• Copying settings transfers the ticked groups once; it does not link locations: later edits at the reference location do not reach the targets by themselves. Payment connections, integrations, seller details and fiscal data are not copied.
• There are no separate revenue centres within a location. Multiple tills and terminals separate workstations; floor zones and tables organise service, but do not create another financial level in the chain.
• Virtual brands are partially supported for delivery channels. They are not separate profit centres: a dedicated storefront and brand profit report are not yet part of this feature.
• One shared item card cannot hold different descriptions per location. Use separate catalogue items for that.
• There are no automatic royalty calculations or complete franchise-management workflow.

Troubleshooting#

FAQ#

Must I create the product again for the second shop? No. Select the shared item for the second location’s menu and assign its price.

Can I move an old location’s settings to a new one? Yes: Locations → on the old location’s card “Copy settings to other locations…” → tick the new location and the groups → check What will change → Copy. Tax is copied only to a location in the same country.

Can I change opening hours across the chain in one edit? There is no shared schedule inheritance, but you can copy one location’s weekly hours to others: Locations → “🛎️ Orders by location” → “Copy hours…”.

Can I stop selling alcohol online at just one location? Yes, if the location is outside Russia: mark the items with the “Alcoholic product” checkbox in Inventory and switch “Alcohol online” off for that location in “Orders by location”. In Russia online alcohol sales are always closed.

How does a co-owner differ from an employee? A co-owner accesses a location from their own account; an employee works within your account’s staff records, with a role and personal location coverage.

Can I help an employee at another location remotely? Support by code is currently beta and available on test environments, not the main domains. In this mode, the employee shares a code from Support, chooses Accept or Decline for the request, and can end the session with Stop. Regular contact options are described in Support.

Related articles#

• Roles and permissions — sections, locations and till permissions.
• Staff — employee cards and managers.
• Time clock — location policies and shifts.
• Security and data — logs and change history.
• POS devices — workstations and equipment.
• Finance — chain reports.